


We'll Never Get to Heaven With the Artillery In Tow

by Jayne L (JayneL)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode Tag, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-30
Updated: 2011-10-30
Packaged: 2017-10-25 02:11:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/270584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JayneL/pseuds/Jayne%20L
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Coda to 'Abandon All Hope'.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We'll Never Get to Heaven With the Artillery In Tow

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilery through 5.10. Prompt from disprove on LJ.  
> Title from 'B.U.R.M.A.', by Dirty Pretty Things.

There's nothing left of the photograph but ash when Dean clears his throat and, sounding hoarse, says, "What'd he say to you, Sam? When I was out."

Sam's gaze is fixed on the flames licking sullenly at the char. His answer is bitter. "More of the same."

"What does that mean?"

There's an edge to the question; Dean looks at Sam with hard, weary eyes. Sam's shoulders straighten before he turns to look back, frowning viciously. "He told me it was only a matter of time before I said yes," he says, and he sounds upset at having had to say the words. As if this is something Dean should have understood already. "He told me to be angry about it. About everything."

"Are you?"

"Aren't _you_?"

Dean doesn't blink. "Anything else?"

Sam's hands cut haphazardly through the air, the gesture more helpless than anything else. "Isn't that enough?"

Dean stares at him, either too tired to disguise his scrutiny, or not caring to. "Yeah," he says finally, and after another moment, places his hand on his brother's arm. The touch seems to gentle them both. "Yeah, for tonight, that's enough."

Castiel watches, unseen, as they turn again to look back into the fire.

* * *

He goes to Dean later, finds him alone in the faded guest room upstairs. Dean sits on one of the room's two twin beds, the one closest to the grimy window; Ellen had slept in it the night before, Jo in the other, while Sam and Dean made do with the sunken sofa and thin sleeping bag spread on the floor downstairs.

Jo had turned on the stairs as she followed her mother to bed, walked backwards as she laughingly thanked the men for their chivalry.

A whetstone and hunting knife sit idle in Dean's hands. He glances up when Castiel enters, then returns his attention to the knife, turning it slowly so the blade catches the weak light from the hall. "Jo had this knife," he says, and his voice sounds no less rough than it did when he spoke to Sam. "Not _this_ knife; a stiletto. Pig-stick. Used to be her dad's." His mouth twists. "She couldn't handle it worth a damn." Then, distantly: "Always knew her way around a gun, though."

Castiel draws himself up. "You're grieving. I'll go."

"Don't you dare." All at once Dean is on his feet, leaning forward, his knuckles white around the hilt of the knife as he uses it to point at Castiel, emphasizing his bitten-off words. "You sat with them. You drank with them. That meant something. They were people to you."

"They were companionable. They were..." No other word comes readily to mind. Until Dean, Castiel had no concept of someone with whom he simply spent time. Ellen and Jo Harvelle occupy an uncertain space in his slowly-growing catalogue of human experience: more than mortal charges under his care, less than intimately-trusted comrades-in-arms. Finally, he falls back on an approximate term, one of relative safety: "...soldiers."

"Soldiers." Dean's tone is mocking, the look in his eyes hard and hurting. "They were cannon fodder." His gaze darts around Castiel's face, from his eyes to the line of his mouth, searching for something Castiel doesn't know if he'll be able to find. Eventually, he gives up, looks away, takes a step back. When he speaks again, his voice is much quieter. Almost tentative. "Armoury's starting to look a little bare these days."

"I won't tell you to say yes, Dean," Castiel says immediately, and Dean flinches, half-turns away to busy himself with sheathing the knife and placing it and the whetstone on the bedside table. Castiel sees the injury informing his despair and moves closer, reaches out and clasps Dean's shoulder. Again. "Dean." He flinches again, under Castiel's touch, at the sound of his name, but Castiel doesn't let go. "You are not a weapon. Jo and Ellen were not things to be used and cast away. No human is."

Dean laughs. It's a painful sound. "Coulda fooled me."

Castiel kisses him. His intention is to provide comfort--or, if not that, then at least distraction. He doesn't know which one Dean accepts when, after a moment of motionless surprise, he raises his hands to hold Castiel in place and kisses him back.

He tastes of alcohol, smells of dirt, sweat and woodsmoke. When the kiss ends, he doesn't try to pull away; when Castiel pushes close, Dean moves with him; when Dean's back hits the wall, he settles there, spreading his legs and leaning his head back, looking at Castiel through half-closed eyes.

His breathing quickens as Castiel tugs at his fly. At the touch of Castiel's hand wrapping around his cock, his hips jerk; he mutters "Cas" and "more" and "fuck" as he strokes him hard and rough. Castiel expects Dean to put his hands on him in return; instead, he reaches inside Castiel's suitcoat, closes his fists around handfuls of its fabric and leaves them there, tugging the jacket taut across Castiel's shoulders, his knuckles brushing occasionally--electrically--against Castiel's sides through his shirt.

He's silent as he comes, his eyes falling shut, his mouth gone slack. Castiel watches, pressed close, his own desire a hot, tightening curl low in his body.

Dean opens his eyes and meets his gaze, dark and steady. After a thick swallow, he rasps, "Do it," and Castiel fumbles his slacks open, works himself urgently with his hand still wet with Dean's come. He doesn't last long.

Dean's eyes stay open--his hands clenched tightly in Castiel's jacket--the whole time.

* * *

Afterward, Dean lays himself out on the bed that had been Jo's, turns his face into the pillow and slides, swiftly but uneasily, into sleep. Castiel stands in the shadows beside the window and watches, sees him safely into exhausted dreamlessness before casting his attention towards the others downstairs: Bobby, awake, mired in whiskey, sorrow and physical pain; Sam, dozing fitfully, his mind restless with Lucifer's promises. Angry.

Castiel had lied to Dean. As he looks at him now, still as death but for the slow, unconscious movements of breathing, he thinks he should feel shame; he doesn't. It wouldn't have helped Dean to be told that only angels and demons are soldiers in this battle, or that humans _are_ only weapons, to be wielded without mercy by whichever side can manage the firmest grip.

It wouldn't have helped. Especially since Castiel believes Dean already knows.

"For the unholy use we have made of your creations, oh God," he murmurs, the memory of Dean's passivity with him making his hands close into fists, "I repent. And take small comfort only in knowing it was not man who first committed war."


End file.
